In existing Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) including an evolving High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) system, cells where User Equipments (UEs) reside are all single carrier cells. A single carrier cell works with only one carrier frequency. UEs in the cell support High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA).
To enable current systems to provide services of higher rate for UEs, multi-carrier HSPA technology emerges.
In the following manner, multi-carrier HSPA can break the limit that currently one cell work with only one carrier frequency.
UEs realize data transmission with multi-carriers by cooperation between at least two single carrier cells. Thus, a UE supporting multi-carriers can concurrently establish connections with multiple single carrier cells, each connection between the UE and a single carrier cell being able to send different data. The main carrier cell is a single carrier cell providing broadcast channels (also known as control channels) for UEs.
In a single carrier system, in order to ensure the stability of the system, a UE need to go through an admission process before accessing the network. This is to make sure that the remaining resources (including power resources, downlink codes, etc) can meet the minimum requirements of the UE. Therefore, Radio Network Controller (RNC) needs to acquire the usage information of downlink resources in the single carrier cell where the UE resides, and performs admission control according to the information.
The inventors find that this prior art has the following drawbacks:
After introducing the multi-carrier HSPA technology, the cell in which the UE resides becomes a multi-carrier cell, which includes at least two cooperation established single carrier cells with each other. Similar to the situation where the cell in which the UE resides is a single carrier cell, the RNC needs to acquire the usage information of downlink resources in the multi-carrier cell where the UE resides, and performs admission control according to the information. However, current reporting methods for single carrier system cannot meet the demand of multi-carrier system performing resource management.